The Three Years
by MuchTooHighACost
Summary: The time that James, Juliet, Miles, and Jin spend with the Dharma Initiative are the most important years of their lives. This is that story. Mostly Suliet with mentions and implications of other canon pairings.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi reader! It's been a very long time since I've written for LOST, and I've literally been coming back to this story off and on for almost three years now. But I think I finally have enough of it written to post in chapters and share with you, so please enjoy.**

**When I started reading and writing LOST a few years back, there didn't seem to be any full-fledged, multi-chap stories that dealt with what happened to Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Jin during their three years with the Dharma Initiative. There were one-shots and snippets of course, some of which I wrote myself, but I needed something more concrete, and thus, this story was born. **

**It's going to be mostly Suliet, with mentions and implications of other canon pairings. And the first few chapters are going to be expository and pretty slow going, so I hope you'll stick with me, at least for a little while.**

**So, without further ado, please read and review!**

**PS- If you're currently reading my work in other fandoms, don't worry, I haven't abandoned you! This was sitting around on my computer and I was just itching to share it with you. **

* * *

They slept in the rec room that first night, all five of them. James, Juliet, Miles, Jin, and Dan. They rotated from the couch in two-hour shifts so no one ever got a completely awful night's sleep, although Juliet had a theory that the concrete floor and the lumpy sofa had nothing to do with her insomnia. She lay awake at night staring at the ceiling wondering if she'd made the right choice. She knew she'd only agreed to stay for two weeks, but for some reason it felt like the biggest decision she'd ever made in her life. In a way, it was. She'd been trying to get off this island for three years and then suddenly she was offered a way off and decided to stay. Who was she? What had changed?

She sat up from the floor and looked at James sprawled out across the couch. She'd given up the coveted seat an hour ago, as per the agreement, and now just watched him sleep. Three months ago if someone had told her that she would befriend the victims of that plane crash and then choose to stay on the island to help them, she would have laughed in their face. The chain of events was just so comical.

Juliet laughed quietly, but loud enough to make James move on the couch. "Say something?" he grumbled, jerking awake.

"Sorry," she whispered. "Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"Easier said than done," he said, and then turned over and was breathing heavily in ten seconds.

Juliet had never been a heavy sleeper. When she was little and shared a room with Rachel, the lights would go out and she would hear her sister snoring within minutes. But Juliet took a bit of settling to finally fall asleep, and then once she did, the slightest noise, the tiniest rustle made her alert. And that was when she was safe in her own bed. Here, with nothing but a thin Dharma blanket between her and the cool concrete of the rec room floor, sleep was impossible.

She laughed again, she couldn't help it. "I'm sorry," she giggled behind her hand when James turned around, annoyed.

"Care to tell me what the hell is so damn funny, Blondie?"

"Nothing," she said, wiping her eyes.

She heard him rustle around, and she thought he'd fallen back asleep, but a few minutes later she heard his voice come out of the darkness. "Thanks for staying," he said quietly.

She was surprised, but answered back, "No problem."

"Why'd you do it?"

Juliet shrugged. "I don't know."

They fell into a comfortable silence and after a while, James sighed and lay back down again, settling into the couch. Juliet did the same, rolled over, and pretended to fall asleep just as she heard him say, "You don't sleep a wink at night, do you?"

She'd been caught. Smiling sheepishly, she turned to face him. "No, not really."

"Take the couch," James offered, standing.

"No, James, come on. We share the couch. We rotate, all of us. It's not fair if I get it twice."

"Think of it as a gentleman doing a lady a favor."

She studied him, half shrouded in darkness, half illuminated by the moonlight that shone through the caged windows to the rec room. There was darkness in his face, that lean shadowy look that made him so mysterious. But there was light, too. He was honest, she believed that. For some reason, she trusted him. There was something about the hungry look in his eyes that said he deserved at least two weeks' company on this island. Maybe that was why she'd agreed to stay. To make sure she hadn't been wrong about him. To have a victory again.

"Keep the couch, James. See you in the morning."

Juliet rolled over, facing away from him, and shut her eyes, hoping that somehow, she would fall into a gently rocking slumber before sunrise. She didn't, and thought instead about empty docks and questions without answers.

X

Horace came in before it was light. There was the unforgiving sound of metal against metal as he unlocked the door and scraped it open, and then the shuffling of his work boots over the concrete floor.

"Rise and shine, ship wreckers," he called, and Juliet pretended to be waking from some deep sleep. Around her, the guys were rising stiffly from their sleeping places like bodies from graves.

"Good morning. As I understand it, your friend Dan here is getting on the sub and the rest of you are staying behind to look for the rest of your crew."

"Yeah, we'll look all right," James grunted, wincing as he pulled on his shirt. "Don't mean we're gonna find anything." Juliet shot him a look.

Horace didn't seem to notice. "I'll take you to the dock so you can see Dan off, and then we'll see what we can do about getting you some equipment."

They followed Horace through the barracks as the sky glowed with a pink sunrise ahead of them. Juliet looked around, surprised to see that people were actually up and working at this ungodly hour. Men and women dressed in those tacky Dharma jumpsuits walked back and forth between the yellow houses on roads that she would come to know very well in thirty years. Being a stranger in a place she knew so well was disconcerting.

The submarine loomed before them at the end of the dock like some post-apocalyptic leviathan. She was here. She could get on that sub and go home now to… to what? To a world she'd seen through the eyes of a five year old, a place without any of the conveniences of modern society that she was used to? She fit in more here on this rock than she did in the place she'd grown up calling "home."

Juliet glanced up and down the length of the sub, its sleek sides covered with a thin sheen of water. This was some ridiculous trick, some cruel plan the island had for her. She hadn't been able to leave the island when she actually had something to go back to, and now that she'd been transported back in time thirty years, here was the opportunity right in front of her.

"Juliet. Are you okay?" Dan asked.

"What? Oh." She pulled herself from her thoughts. "Have a safe trip Dan." She hugged him goodbye. "Go invent the internet or something," she laughed.

"Take care, man," Miles said again.

They watched him climb aboard, eventually losing sight of him amongst the other workers climbing on. And before they really had time to process Dan's departure, Horace said, "Well gang, welcome to Dharmaville."


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks for the feedback on the first chapter... this one's a bit longer. Enjoy!**

* * *

The jeep bumped up and down as they sped through the jungle in silence. Horace had informed Richard last night as Paul's body had been turned over that the new arrivals would be in and out of the jungle for a few days looking for the rest of their crew.

They drove past places that they knew as well as their own hometowns: the tall grasses, the bamboo forest, the big river, the smaller river, the waterfall… Juliet's mind drifted once more to last night on the dock. What was it about James that had made her stay? She glanced over at him from the passenger's seat of the bouncing jeep. He certainly wasn't her "type"; he had a blatant disregard for the rules and an independent attitude that got him in trouble and he was ridiculously attractive. Not that ridiculously attractive wasn't her type—

Miles' voice cut through her thoughts. "Sooner or later they're gonna need a reason why we haven't found anyone, and I don't think the fact that there isn't anyone to find is the answer they're going to want to hear."

"Zip it, will ya?" James snapped. "Here's what we're gonna do. We'll go down to the beach all day and get back real late at night, make it look like we've turned the place upside down looking for our people. Say we found em and they were all dead, so we sent em out to sea. And then we just hunker down and wait for Locke."

"Not to play devil's advocate, but what if Locke doesn't come?" Juliet asked. "What if John's not back at the end of two weeks?"

"I'm still working on that part," James grumbled.

X

"This ain't gonna be here in thirty years," James said, slapping a tall palm tree that stood on the beach. Juliet shaded her eyes and looked up.

"How do you know that?" Miles asked. He glanced up from skipping rocks.

"Cause in thirty years this is right where I'm gonna put my tent," James said. "And there sure as hell wasn't no tree in my way."

"How do we know that for sure though?" Miles said. "What if we make sure that nothing happens to it? What if we come and check on it every day, and in thirty years it's still standing here?"

"I don't think it's gonna be a huge deal, Enus."

"I think what Miles is getting at," Juliet said, "is that we don't know how much of what we do here is going to affect what happens in the future."

"Well what'd your friend Bill Nye the science guy think?" James asked.

Miles shrugged. "Dan only told me a little bit and I didn't understand most of it. He kept saying the most important thing is that this has already happened. We just don't remember it. This is the present for us, but it also already happened thirty years ago."

"So if it's already happened, if thirty years ago we were already here, why aren't there two versions of us running around the barracks right now?" Juliet asked.

Miles opened his mouth to answer and then realized he didn't have one to give. "I don't know. Dan was the scientist, not me. He's the one to ask about all this stuff."

"Well it's a good thing he's on a sub in the middle of the goddamn ocean then, isn't it?" James asked, frustrated. He shook his head and walked away, joining Jin up by the tree line looking for things he recognized from their old camp.

"Pretty weird, isn't it?" James said.

"Our camp," Jin said, nodding. "But not yet?"

"I don't understand it any more than you do, Jin-bo," James sighed.

As she looked out at the waves, Juliet asked Miles, "How much did Widmore tell you before you came to this island?"

He shrugged. "Not much. He told us about flight 815, told us that there were already people living here and that they probably weren't going to take kindly to being invaded."

"Anything else? Did he tell you anything about us, the people who were living here? Our jobs, our work on the island, how we'd gotten here… what had happened on the island in the past?"

Miles narrowed his eyes. "What are you getting at?"

She sighed. "Nothing."

"The plan was to get in, kill Ben Linus, and get out."

"If you had walked into the barracks and told us that, I would have led you right to his front porch," Juliet said.

"I always thought it was me who was going to do it," Miles said. "You know, that I was gonna be the first one to spot him and just pull the trigger. But I never did. I never even met him. And maybe… I don't know, maybe I wasn't supposed to."

"Come on, you're not really buying into all this destiny stuff, are you?" Juliet scoffed.

Miles shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes it makes sense, like this morning—I'm not positive, but I could have sworn I saw my mom." Juliet's eyes widened. "Leaving one of the Dharma houses. I know, I know, I'm probably crazy… but if I'm not—if my mom is really living on this island—I can get answers to questions I've wanted to know my whole life. Maybe I'm supposed to be here for a reason."

"You two ain't talking fate, are you?" James asked, sauntering over. He'd taken off his shirt and was working on his belt buckle.

"Dude," Miles scoffed.

"What are you doing?" Juliet asked.

"What the hell's it look like, Blondie? Going for a swim! Anyone care to join me?" They stared at him blankly. "No takers?"

"Maybe later," Juliet said, shading her eyes against the sun.

"Suit yourselves." James waded into the surf in his boxers and then went under, shooting through the water like a fish. He came up thirty feet out, tossing his hair out of his eyes and grinning. "Water's great!" he called.

Juliet sighed. It was a beautiful day and they were trapped on a mysterious island in the 1970s. She might as well enjoy herself. She stood up, shucked off her jeans, and headed into the water. The ocean rushed in her ears as she went under, swimming against the strong tide, and she broke surface after swimming past James.

"Well, if it ain't the little mermaid!" he said in surprise.

She grinned, pleased at her own boldness. "You only live once, right?"

"On this island, who knows?" He laughed then cocked his head toward the beach. "Miles really think he's here for a reason?"

Juliet shrugged. "It's none of my business. But I was stuck here for so long and the only 'reason' I was here was because I wasn't allowed to leave."

"So what's the reason you're here now?" he asked.

She smiled at him and said, "I'm still working on that part."

X

While Miles made a fire, Jin was able to create a makeshift net and catch them some dinner. When it was ready, he called out to James and Juliet, who were still in the water. They washed up on the beach, worn out and thirsty. Hoping to avoid some snide comment from James, Juliet quickly pulled her jeans on over her tan panties, but not before she caught James glance and then look away.

After dinner they let the fire burn low, then returned to the barracks and told Horace their story. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said quietly. "Everyone's decided that it's all right if you stay here while you decide whether or not you want to get on that sub that comes in two weeks."

Juliet was given a small, one bedroom house to herself, and Miles, James and Jin shared a bigger house down the road.

After washing the sea out of her hair, Juliet rooted around the kitchen. The fish had been good, but not quite enough to fill her up. Sometimes she marveled at the fact that James, Jin and the other survivors had lived on fish, fruit and boar for three months. She was about to start making pancakes when there was a knock at the door. It was the woman they'd saved out in the jungle…Amy? She looked better than she had when they'd met her, but still a little worse for wear.

"Can I help you?" Juliet asked.

"I was just looking for Jim LaFleur," Amy said expectantly.

"Oh, well he lives a few houses down. Um, there." She pointed.

Amy blushed. "Oh, I'm sorry. I saw that you were living here and I just assumed that—I thought you two were… well. I'm sorry."

"Oh. Oh!" Juliet laughed, embarrassed. "No, James and I are just friends. Come on inside."

Amy stepped in and looked around, smiling. "I lived in this house when I first came here."

"Really?" Juliet asked. She went back to mixing the pancake batter.

"Yup. I came off the sub fresh out of college, wanting to make a difference in the world."

"What did you want to do with the Initiative?" _What tricks did these people use to lure _you_ to this island? Want to hear what they told me? There are some good ones…_

"I studied English in school. I had no idea what I was actually going to do, and then one day a Dharma recruiter came to campus and I watched a video of what life was like here on this island and I just knew I wanted to be a part of it. So I came here and then I met Paul and everything just got… turned upside down."

Juliet smiled. "I know how that is."

"If you're not with Jim, then—you've got somebody at home? Or… oh no, your husband wasn't travelling on your boat, was he?"

"No," Juliet answered. "I'm, um, I'm not married."

"Gosh, I'm sorry," Amy said, blushing again. "I just keep jumping to conclusions about you, don't I? You know, I don't even think I know your name."

"I'm Juliet." She extended a hand.

"Amy."

There was a quick knock on the door and James walked in. "Hey Juliet, you figured out what that light switch in the basement does yet?" He stopped when he smelled the pancakes. "You cooking?"

She smirked. "Yes, James, I am cooking, and you and Jin and Miles better get over here if you want any."

"Jim, I was looking for you earlier," Amy said from the couch.

"What's up?"

"It's nothing important," Amy said, her voice going soft. "I just wanted you to know that I'm grateful for everything you and your friends did for me. And I don't want you to think that I'm mad because they had to take Paul's body—" She choked and closed her eyes for a minute, collecting herself.

James looked to Juliet helplessly. "Amy," Juliet said, sitting. "Thank you. And we're here for you, if you need anything." She put a reassuring hand on Amy's knee and caught James' eye, telling him to do the same.

He moved to the sofa and patted her shoulder a little roughly. "It's gonna be okay, Amy."

Amy smiled through glistening eyes. "Horace can be a little hasty when it comes to judging people, but I think you guys are great. Just the kind of people Dharma is looking for."

"Hold your horses, sister…" James said.

"I'll talk to Horace and see if he'll let you guys stay." She glanced back and forth between James and Juliet, sensing something in the air. "That is—unless you want to leave."

James shook his head adamantly and said, "I'm staying, no matter what."

Amy looked expectantly at Juliet. "I'm—I'll have to think about it," Juliet answered. "And I definitely can't answer for Jin and Miles."

"All right. Well I'll let Horace know," Amy said, coming to her feet. "And thank you again. Thank you."

The door closed behind her and James sighed. "Well, don't we have a lot to talk about…"


	3. Chapter 3

An hour later after several beers and a good meal, James was a little more optimistic. "Damn, Blondie, I don't know how long it's been since I had a home cooked meal, but that might have been the best thing I ever tasted."

"Yeah, seriously," Miles said. "You are like, a food genius."

Juliet smiled. "It was just pancakes. But thank you."

"No seriously. You should open a restaurant on the island," Miles said. "Give it some cheesy name…"

Juliet shook her head. "Thanks, but I'm not staying here to open a restaurant."

"You want to stay here?" asked Jin.

"I really have no idea," she sighed.

"Well think about it," Miles said. "What is there for us back home? It's 1974. I'm not even born yet. You guys are probably toddlers and CDs haven't been invented."

"Sun is in the future," Jin said. "If I go home, it is not home."

"Jin-bo's right, Blondie, none of us have got anything to go back to," James said with a nod.

Juliet pictured herself, a five-year-old version of herself, chasing after seven-year-old Rachel in their backyard. Somewhere at home right now, she was with her sister. But if she went back, what would she do? Watch her sister grow up and get sick? The technology to research cancer hadn't been invented yet, it's not like she could go back and try to save the day. They hadn't even discovered AIDS yet.

"Maybe there's nothing for us at home," Juliet said, "but what is there for us here?"

"The thing that everybody wants," James answered. "A clean slate."

X

She decided after the first few days that she was staying. It was crazy and stupid, and she was going to have to join the Dharma Initiative, but somehow she was oddly at peace with the whole thing. She'd always believed in free will, in choosing her own adventure, in making her own life. And she'd made it, all right. She'd made it a mess. Maybe for once she was making the right choice.

"Don't look so down, today's the day," James drawled, pulling up a chair in the cafeteria.

"Yeah, the first day of the rest of our lives," Miles snorted.

"It'll be fine, Miles," Juliet assured him. "I'm sure you got a really great job."

"I'll kill myself if they make me work in this place," Miles grunted, pushing his oatmeal around in his bowl. "Cafeteria duty? No thanks."

"Those damn aptitude tests are just to mess with us, Enus, don't sweat it," James said.

"And besides, you just lied anyway, right?" Juliet asked.

"What? No, that's crazy."

She shrugged. "It's what I did. If you think I'm going back to working in that infirmary after I know what's going to happen to all those pregnant women, you're crazy. I'll stitch people up if they get cuts, bruises, but as far as the Dharma Initiative knows, I only have the medical skills of a first year nursing student."

"Hell, you gotta be kidding," James said in disbelief. "You know how to do that stuff, why are you gonna stand by and let other people—"

"I don't want to talk about it," Juliet interrupted.

"Okay then," James grumbled.

"Here comes Amy," Miles said, pointing.

"Morning!" Amy chirped with a smile. "You guys ready to officially join the Initiative?"

"Ready," Jin said.

Amy smiled. "Good. Come with me, I think you'll like what we've found for you. Our first stop is just over here." She led the four of them out of the cafeteria to a small building near the middle of the barracks.

"Security?" Miles asked, reading the sign outside.

"Yep, isn't it great?" Amy said. "It happened to be a really good fit for all three of you, and we thought you'd like to stay together, so… you lucked out."

"Well look who's coworkers," James laughed, and the guys exchanged grateful glances.

"They're waiting for you downstairs," Amy said. "I'll be back in a little bit to make sure everything's okay."

"See you later," James said to Juliet.

She shrugged. "Guess so."

"Everything okay with you two?" Amy asked after the guys had gone inside.

"He just doesn't know when to mind his own business," Juliet mumbled.

Amy seemed undeterred. "Well, I think you're really going to like your job, Juliet. We're going to put you as a nurse in the infirmary."

Juliet felt her heart hit her stomach. "What? No, I—I can't do that kind of stuff, Amy. I don't know that much about medicine." Her face was starting to flush and she knew her eyes were filling with tears. Damn it! "I would be—I'm awful at… saving people, I can't save lives, Amy. Look over my test again, there's no way I'm qualified, you've gotta—"

"It's okay, Juliet, calm down," Amy said, putting a hand on her friend's back. "Breathe. If you really don't want to work in the infirmary, I'm sure we can find something else for you to do."

"Please?" Juliet asked, her eyes wild and desperate.

"Okay, we can go talk to Horace," Amy said, gently taking her hand and leading her to the main building. "I thought you'd really enjoy the infirmary. You went to nursing school for a year, I thought."

"It didn't work out," Juliet said shakily.

They entered the main building and Amy approached Horace. Juliet hung back and watched, reading their lips and straining her ears to listen. Amy really seemed to be pulling for her but Horace looked skeptical. How had this happened? She'd made it clear on her aptitude test that she had very basic medical knowledge and no interest in the subject at all. What could have given her away? She hated feeling out of control like this. Was this what Ben had meant when he was always talking about the island choosing their paths for them?

Amy walked back over to Juliet and sighed. "Okay. Horace doesn't usually do this, but since you really seem to be upset and we happen to have an opening somewhere else, you're in luck."

Juliet heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank you so much. You're not going to regret this."

"I certainly hope not."

"Where's the other opening?" Juliet asked.

Amy got a mischievous look in her eyes. "Know anything about cars?"

X

She was sweaty. She smelled. The jumpsuits were starchy and hot and awful. She was pretty sure she had motor oil in her hair. But she wasn't a doctor, and that was all that mattered. Juliet was thanking her lucky stars that she'd dated a grease monkey in high school and knew the basics of car repair.

"We don't normally have chicks in the motor pool," a tall, lean guy admitted to Juliet from under one of the vans. "But we just had a guy go home to be with his wife while she had her baby, and I guess they wanted to fill the opening quick."

"I just didn't want to work in the infirmary," Juliet admitted. "They were gonna put me there, can you believe that?"

"I'm Mac," the guy said, ignoring her question and offering a hand. "Been here about six months."

They shook. "Juliet."

"As in _Romeo and_?" Mac teased.

"If I had a nickel…" She laughed.

"That's why they wanted to put you in the infirmary," he said, pointing with a wrench. "You've got the best laugh. People like to hear laughs like that when they're sick."

He smiled and slid back under the van, and Juliet was glad she'd found a job that made her laugh again.

X

"It couldn't have worked out better," James said that night at dinner. Dinner at Juliet's had become a regular thing for them the past few days. She kept joking that she was going to make them cook eventually, but between the four of them, they got the dishes done faster than she ever could have alone, so she brushed it off for now.

"They've got cameras all over the barracks, absolutely every outdoor inch of this place is under surveillance 24/7," Miles added. "The areas are divided into grids all rigged with cameras, and they all feed into the security room."

"One of us is bound to be there most of the time," James said. "As soon as Locke comes back to this island we're gonna know."

"He will come back soon?" Jin asked. "Or not?"

"I guess we're gonna find out," James sighed.

It was the truth, but it sounded pretty ominous when he put it like that. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Forks clanked on plates, half-full beer cans landed with dull thuds back on the table.

Finally, Miles said, "Um, Juliet, you've got something on your face." He pointed to his temple.

It jerked Juliet out of her reverie. "What? Oh. Must have missed it…" She reached up with her napkin and wiped some motor oil off her skin.

"They really got you fixing cars, Blondie?" James asked, chuckling.

"Yeah, they really do." She smirked.

"Guess your little white lie worked after all," he drawled. "Now you're stitching up cars instead of stitching up people."

Juliet didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she'd almost ended up working in the infirmary anyway, so she just shrugged and said, "Yeah, I guess it did work."

After dinner, she and Jin played a quick, distracted hand of cards while James and Miles cleaned up, but an unsettling silence had settled over the small yellow house since mentioning Locke, and soon they parted ways for the night.

On his way out the door, James stopped and asked her, "You okay?"

She looked up tiredly from the couch. "Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"I didn't mean to call you out before. About not wanting to be a doctor," he said, shuffling his feet. "You got your reasons and I sure as hell don't understand them but I ain't gonna mess with them either."

"Thank you James." Juliet smiled softly.

"See you in the morning then," James said, and slipped out the door after Jin and Miles.

Juliet stayed on the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest. Her heart pounded every time she thought about the fact that she'd almost been a doctor again. It wasn't the responsibility that deterred her. That had never been something she had a problem with. It wasn't even the fact that most medical procedures she was familiar with hadn't even been invented yet. It was the fact that if the Initiative was somehow able to overlook and accept her futuristic medical knowledge, they would use her talents for the same things Ben and Richard had tried to use them for—and she knew what would happen to those women. Knowing the fate of every pregnant woman on this island was scary enough as it was. She didn't want to have to live with the knowledge, again, that there was nothing she could do to help them.

Then there was the other part of her brain that kept thinking back to her talk on the beach with Miles. What if things were different now? What if mothers on this island _did_ carry to term because whatever caused those other women to die hadn't happened yet? What if the island didn't have a cruel sense of humor just yet? (Although she highly doubted that.) And if she had taken the job, what if something she did here in 1974 caused the things she saw thirty years later? She still didn't fully understand the whole 'this is our reality' thing, she didn't think even Daniel did, but it was still a possibility that haunted her.

She was still a strong believer in free will—this was the choice she had made, and this was the choice she was going to live with.


End file.
